Chapter 136: Is it love or not?
Ryder stood outside Noah’s door, his chest tight as the last conversation clung to him like an invisible chain. Noah’s tear-streaked face wouldn’t leave his mind. He could still hear the sharp slap, feel the sting of Noah’s words as he was thrown out of his life.
Why does it hurt so much? Ryder’s thoughts were in disarray. There was no reason for him to feel this way—no reason for his chest to ache the way it did. He hadn’t lied to Noah. He had told the truth, hadn’t he? They were just two people who happened to enjoy each other’s company without the need for labels, for all the mess that feelings brought. What was wrong with that?
He clenched his jaw. Is it so necessary to label every feeling and moment? What they had was special—more than just sex, more than the empty hookups. But that didn’t mean it had to be something defined by words like ’love’ or ’relationship.’ Why ruin something by giving it a name that would only complicate things?
Yet, despite his rationalizations, Noah’s broken face kept flashing through his mind, and every time it did, it felt like someone was stabbing his heart with needles. A soft, painful throb that wouldn’t go away.
Ryder hadn’t been raised to deal with feelings like this. As a child, he had never been taught what love was supposed to be. His parents—if you could even call them that—had only ever shown him that emotions were tools, something to use to get what you wanted from people. They had taught him how to manipulate feelings, how to bet on them, how to extract value from others by leveraging their emotions.
But love? Affection? Attachment? Those were words Ryder had never truly known the meaning of.
He learned early on that people who were supposed to love you the most could leave you without a second thought. No matter how much you gave, no matter how hard you loved them, they would still go. His parents had been prime examples of that. They left him in more ways than one, physically and emotionally. And in their absence, he’d learned quickly how useless feelings could be.
The stronger your feelings for someone, the weaker you became. He had seen it time and time again—people consumed by their emotions, becoming shadows of their former selves because they had loved too deeply, given too much. Ryder promised himself he would never be like that. He would never let anyone have that kind of power over him.
Feelings were a curse. The moment you named them, the moment you gave them importance, they would start to rot everything from the inside out.
But Noah...Ryder exhaled heavily, rubbing his temples. Noah is different. Noah wasn’t just a casual fling. He had never expected to feel this way, to have Noah occupy so much space in his mind. But that didn’t mean he had to love him, right? What was wrong with what they had? Why did it need to be something more?
In Ryder’s world, emotions were best left unnamed. That way, they couldn’t grow into something that could destroy you. If you left them as they were, free and undefined, they would never get cursed by the expectations that came with labels like love or commitment.